Sunday, February 4, 2018

Have you not known? Have you not heard? So says the first reading. Twice.
Seems like Isaiah is telling us to listen up. It’s one of the greatest attention-getters in
almost any conversation. People use it
all the time: “did you hear that so-and-so is getting married to that guy? Did you hear that so-and-so died?” In fact, I used that expression only last
week. I do notknow
whether it is comforting or not to know that the preface for almost all modern
gossip, good and bad, has been around for millenia. At any rate, it gets you listening.

So.

Have you not heard that
the Lord is the everlasting God, the creator of the heavens and the earth?He gives power to the faint, and strengthens
the powerless!Sounds
pretty excellent.And Isaiah tells us
that it gets EVEN BETTER.Even the
youths will faint and grow weary, the young will fall exhausted.

How many times have we
said that we got through something only because God was at our side?I remember, when I was in the depths of a
very severe depression, that I somehow survived a trip to Cincinnati with my
family for a wedding.I don’t remember
much of the weekend (even through pictures), but I know that God got me through
it.

Those who wait for the
Lord shall renew their strength.They
shall run and not grow weary.They shall
walk and not grow faint.

The Psalm emphasizes this
even more.Not only does the Lord
rebuild Jerusalem (I understand that’s a pretty excellent thing), but he also:

Gathers the exiles out of
Israel.
heals the brokenhearted
lifts up the lowly
prepares rain for the earth, makes grass grow upon mountains, green plants for
mankind, and provides food for the flocks and herds.How lucky we are to experience this!Healing of our heartbreak.I’m sure we can all relate to having some
form of heartbreak in our lives, and the gratitude we feel to God for helping
us through it.

But wait, there’s more!
Paul tells the Corinthians about proclaiming the Gospel, the GOOD NEWS.He tells us how to do it: for the Jews he
became a Jew, to those under the law he became one under the law, even though
he is not.To the weak he became
weak.In essence, he made sure that he
spoke the language of his audience, and met them where they are.In so doing, he became accessible to everyone
who heard his message.He became comprehensible.It helps us get on board with this.We all know how quickly a conversation can
end when someone uses “jargon” that we don’t know.

In the Gospel, Jesus came
into town, casting out demons, healing the sick.First he helped out Simon’s mother-in-law
with her fever, and, as we have learned, news spread.I can imagine the people of the town saying
things like, “haven’t you heard about the guy visiting Simon’s mother in
law?He made her better!”By the end of the day, the whole city was
gathered around the door to ask Jesus to cast out demons and heal the
sick.The next morning Jesus went out
and prayed alone.Once Simon and his
companions found him and told him that everyone was looking for him, Jesus
spoke of his real mission:

Let us go out to
neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim
the message there also.Proclaim the
message of the Lord rebuilding Jerusalem, giving strength to the weak, heals
the brokenhearted, gives power to the faint, strengthens the powerless.And more!What a joyful and wonderful message.A message that has been with the prophets for, well, about as long as
that gossip-preface has been.

Jesus proclaimed the
message by helping to heal the sick, casting out demons.He didn’t stand on a soapbox and tell it.He proclaimed it, through his
actions.The old adage of “actions speak
louder than words” is true even for the son of God.Or maybe especially.

So how do we
proclaim the message?Jesus did it by
casting out demons, healing the sick.But what about us? What do our actions show? Deacon Barbara turns us toward the door, where
our mission truly begins.YES!It’s great that we spend this time together
as a community, and share our love and friendship with each other, but why stop
there?Jesus went to neighboring
towns.Paul spoke the language and
entered the culture of those he proclaimed to.So why should we limit our proclamation to just these walls, just our
Episcopal friends?And do we have to tell
everyone that being Episcopalian is the best way to proclaim and learn of the
good news?As much as I wish we could (I
like being Episcopalian!), it would contradict Paul’s advice of meeting people
where they are so that they can truly understand and internalize the message.

So how will we live God’s
message and, in so doing, proclaim it?How will we spread the love of God through this world through our
actions?I do notexpect us all to be able to cast out demons, but we certainly can
spread the love of God and the joy we have from it, even if we use terminology
that’s not necessarily “Jesus.”The
customer who ends every phone call to the pharmacy with “God bless you, dear,”
brings me joy and love of God.There’s a
lady who comes into my work every month to give me a copy of Living Faith, the
“roman catholic” version of our Forward Day By Day booklet.She doesn’t do it out of effort to convert
me; she does it out of love for God and love for me.What a beautiful way to proclaim!Returning my cart to the cart corral might
help the cart-pusher feel a little more joy and a little less drudgery.(I am very big on this thanks to my own
cart-pushing experience.)Listening.Holding hands with
someone as she or he grieves, and allowing them the comfort that their grief is
valid and accepted.Sharing in the joy
of someone who just got good news.Doing
it.Living it.We don’t just go to church; we are the
church.In being the church, even
outside this beautiful building, we proclaim the message.

Sunday, June 18, 2017

Preface:
May the words I speak be only truth; let them express the love of God for all
of us.

There are three verses in
the Bible that I fervently believe should be taken literally. The first is “love your neighbor as
yourself.” The next is “God is love.” And perhaps my favorite, from the Gospel of
John: “God is love, and whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.”

Note the common theme here:
LOVE.

Recently I explained to a friend why the message of God
being LOVE is so important to me. My
friend has dealt with a lot of unspeakable heartbreak in his life, and at his
recent loss of his foster child, he messaged me with the cynical quip that “the
man upstairs must have something out for me.”

He was kind of shocked when I told him that the image of
some bearded guy in a big nightgown is not a realistic image of the God I know.

When I explained to him that God is LOVE, and love is all
around us, he got quiet. Of course he
asked “kind of like The Force in Star Wars?”
I had to say yes to God being invisible and powerful, but I also had to
tell him that God would not hide the droids he was looking for.

God is love. Not a man upstairs with a long beard in a
nightgown, not a George Burns-type character, not even Whoopi Goldberg. Love.
Pure and simple. God. Is. Love.

But what about this trinity
business? 3 persons, one God? But God is
LOVE? How can we assign three “persons”
to a conceptual and omnipresent element such as love?

Well, there are so many
different ways that we can love. If you
break it down, those types of love are shown to us explicitly in the
relationship of the Trinity: the love of God the Father, God the Son, and God
the Holy Spirit. What types of love they
are -- and more importantly how these loves relate to each other -- in the
concept of the Trinity.

God the Father. Think about the love of a father; if not a
father, of a parent. This love is
protective, tender, intense, hopeful, and eternal. It’s the love that wants only the greatest
for us, even if it means making sacrifices for the sake of us: “God so loved us
that He sent into the world His only Son that WE may have life.” We often talk about what a beautiful and
incomparable sacrifice that is. Those
who have children know that the kind of love a parent has for a child is a love
unique unto itself, and no one can replicate it. The “you won’t understand this love until you
have your own children.” Wanting the
best for them, encouraging the best in them, but ultimately having to watch
them grow up and be themselves.

God the Son. Think about children. When a baby cries, what is the parent’s first
action to try to comfort them? They hold them.
Touch. Corporeal love. Love that is literally tangible, in our own
human form, that we can understand.
Jesus came to Earth as a human – as a tangible being! – that we might
understand the love of God in a way that we can touch and hold. Mary Magdalene loved Jesus tangibly by
pouring expensive perfume on His feet and wiping them with her hair. The woman in the Gospel of Matthew who said
to herself “if I only touch his
cloak, I will be made well.” Jesus who rubbed
mud on the blind man’s eyes – touched
his eyes! – and made him able to see.
Jesus, the tangible emulation of the love that God the father has for
us.

And then there’s the Holy
Spirit. Come, Holy Spirit; fill the
hearts of the faithful and kindle in us the FIRE of your love. The holy spirit came upon the apostles as
tongues of fire, and the apostles were able to speak the languages of all of
the persons from all over the world, allowing people to come together to hear
the message of the Lord.

People come together in
groups around fire. Think of how many
times we use candles in church: candles on the altar, the Easter candle, the
candles we light in prayer for ourselves and others. Novena candles you can find in the Hispanic
section of the grocery store. My
favorite moment of the church year is during the Great Vigil of Easter when the
Pascal candle enters the dark church and suddenly the entire sanctuary is
bathed in a light brighter than one would expect. Of course my love for everyone holding their
lit candle while the Exsultet is chanted isn’t too bad either. All of these candle experiences are
expressions of LOVE.

There is beauty and love in
gathering around fires also; I heard a
story of a Cursillo retreat; the first night was silent (as is always the
practice). The power went out, and the
leader of the retreat entered the common room to find that the candidates had
built a fire, all without speaking. How
beautiful a representation of the Holy Spirit at work, both literally in the
fire and spiritually in the silent communication of starting it, and the LOVE
that was involved in doing so.

And how do these all relate
to each other? LOVE. God is love.
Therefore, let us emulate God in loving one another, especially after
this Pentecost; after all, Pentecost charges us to spread the message of God –
LOVE – into the whole world.

Saturday, May 20, 2017

This morning I found myself in my garden space; the one that I hope to be pretty excellent this year, despite my previous record.

The last tenant at our home was quite messy and didn't do much of anything with the house and/or yard; hence the garden area is a veritable command center for dock weed.

I loathe dock weed. I can't dig it up (easily broken tap roots), I can't kill it. I've resorted to all kinds of eco-unfriendly methods, including but not limited to pouring an entire bottle of RoundUp CONCENTRATE on the one plant at the base (after making sure it went downward into the roots). That darn plant came back after a week. The only damage it seemed to display was that a couple of its leaves were a little misshapen at first... then it was back in its full anti-glory.

So my amazing husband got me a 500,000 BTU weed torch. (It doesn't kill the dock either, but it's kind of fun to blast.) It really helps me clear the ground before I plant all of those annual veggies and replace a few of the herbs our puppy decided to dig up earlier this spring. (Lesson learned: never let a 3 month old vizsla puppy loose in the yard if you're not paying complete attention to him.)

I started doing a little blasting with the torch yesterday and then again today. Today I felt an almost profound experience as I watched the flames obliterate all of these weeds to nothing but ashes. I want to honor God and God's creation in this activity, so that I can eat and share the bounty that I cultivated with my hands and by the generosity of God. How am I honoring God's creation if I am busy obliterating and trying to obliterate the plants that I find "undesirable," just so that I might grow the plants I want to? Is that really honoring God? Is it really honoring the Earth? Or is it just honoring my desires for tasty food?

Wednesday, January 11, 2017

Yesterday our dog walk through the woods was through a veritable ice-rain shower, one that made my face feel like it was being pelted by miniature ninja stars. I was cranky anyway, as I'd been having stomach issues all day and felt like garbage. By the end of the walk, I was downright... bitchy. I said something short to my husband, and he replied that for an aspiring clergy member, my words and behavior were not very reflective of that.

I wouldn't be surprised if you heard my eyebrows slam together just by reading that. I hate when he does that.

I mentioned it to him today, once I'd gotten into a better place, asked him why can't clergy be human and have mistakes and instances of bitchiness. He replied "because you're closer to God."

Nope.

I hate to think of any person as closer to God than another person. (Unless you're being the smart aleck who says someone older is closer to God than someone younger because likely the older person will die first... which husband also said.)

"But isn't the job of clergy to be closer to God?"

No.

I don't think anyone is closer to God than any other human being. People may look at clergy as closer to God, but I disagree. Clergy, to me, sometimes function as intermediaries simply because they are more schooled, more studied on the documents and histories of spirituality. I do think it is the job of clergy to be well-read on documents of multiple spiritual philosophies/religions. So, closer to God intellectually? Possibly. But not actually closer to God; God is always with us, in us, around us. Can't get much closer than that.

Thursday, September 1, 2016

About a month ago, I started noticing something beautiful on our dog-walks. Along the trail we walk (it's in the woods in a state park), I noticed some rocks at the base of trees, on fallen logs, etc. Each rock was painted a rather neutral color to fit into the woods, and each rock had a positive message on it. I remember "ah, songbirds -- the love song of the morning" as one of them.(I've made my Cursillo, and I immediately thought of these as palanca, but I refused to take them because I wanted them to make other people's days better too.)One night the rocks disappeared. I thought the park maintenance workers had taken them, and when I asked them (they know us well), they said they hadn't, so I hoped more would come.Meanwhile, I started making rocks of my own, and thought I'd add Project Semicolon work to these rocks. Project Semicolon is a mental health initiative (see link above), and I thought to myself that maybe having the semicolon on them would help people who encounter these on the trail, maybe people who are suffering from depression or even just having a crappy day. I wrote things like "The universe is glad you are here" and "thank you for being." I made sure to plant a few that said "your story is not over"... and I put a large semicolon on all of the rocks after the message I wrote.People started adding them and it was wonderful. Until someone started adding religion.This might be unexpected -- I, the Super-Episcopalian, didn't want to see religious messages spread across the trail? You're darn tootin' I don't.Here's why.Religion divides. As soon as you say "Jesus," a whole bunch of people who think of the bad things about Christianity are automatically repelled from the underlying message. Same if you say "Allah" or any other specified-by-religion name the world uses for that force of love that is the most universal message of God: it repels those who are automatically repelled by the thought of established religion. (Cases in point: my father, my husband, and me when I was going through difficulties with my faith...) And suddenly the rocks have chances to generate negative emotions instead of positive ones.Love unites. Using love without specified religious terms makes these messages more accessible to everyone, religious or not, spiritual or not.I do not want anyone to be repelled/put off/offended/negatively affected by these rocks in any way. I'm sure someone will find something to be offended about, but I think that if the specified religious wording is kept away from the rocks, people of different or struggling or nonexistent faiths will feel more comfortable seeing these rocks, and possibly the message of Love will enter more hearts.And that's what God's all about, no? It/He/She is about LOVE. All are welcome. Why wouldn't we want to welcome everyone no matter what? And to do that, I don't think that making something feel off-putting will make someone feel welcome.All are welcome.Amen.

Wednesday, June 29, 2016

Two years ago this past May I was received into the Episcopal Church. My particular reception liturgy was awkward and chaotic for me. Our priest-in-charge at my church had just stepped in at that point, and so I missed some of the information that I needed before the liturgy. So I came in late and wound up walking into the meeting with the Bishop when it was halfway through; 10 minutes before the mass my priest hadn't shown up yet owing to getting stuck at the doctor, and he was in a flannel shirt and jeans when he did. It was in a tiny church in a tiny town, and the music consisted of a single organist who meets every stereotype of the classic little-old-lady-set-in-her-ways organist who makes so many mistakes that it threw off all the people who actually read music. All in all, quite the "rinky-dink" service. It was my mother's first exposure to the Episcopal Church, and I'm afraid that it wasn't the best possible impression for someone being completely uncomfortable walking into the nave (especially someone as well-versed in liturgy as my mother).

This past year was the Reception/Confirmation/Baptism liturgy of my dreams. It was in one of the largest and most beautiful churches in the Diocese, it had a 40 person choir made up of different choirs from the district (mostly made up of the people from said large and gorgeous church -- which also boasts a phenomenal music program), and there was incense and amazing organ music and phenomenal choir music... I was honored to sing in the choir. And I got to watch the beauty of the liturgy in one of the most beautiful environments possible.

My first thought was how much I wished I'd waited. How awesome would it have been to walk down the aisle to Grace Church as a confirmand and see the magnificence of that environment. And hear the choir! And have my priest actually in clericals!

But as I watched from the choir stalls, I got to thinking: I've always loved the high liturgy, but how many times do I get lost in it? (One of the ways I explain the contrast between Episcopal vs. Roman Catholic is to say that Episcopalians in general are a lot more easygoing but they still like to have fun with all the ritual stuff.) I inherit this probably from my mother, who is so well-versed in liturgy that she knows that you're supposed to genuflect on TWO knees on Maundy/Holy Thursday after the Eucharistic procession (RC church). Her appreciation of the beauty of the rituals is not lost on me, but how many times do I wish that she missed that one little misstep/wrong order of something so that I wouldn't have to hear about it later and then have my view on the liturgy tainted?

So: was "my" liturgy a message from God, a forced situation of humility for me to learn to appreciate? I mean, my first exposure to the Episcopal Church was in a very High church (which is what ultimately made me fall in love with it -- the poetry of the Ordinary, the beauty of the hymns, the awesome organ blasting, all of it!), but not all churches of any denomination are "high."

A forced humility. Sometimes we need this. We need to see things stripped to their essentials to show that there is something greater at work than incense and loud organ music and magnificent choirs. The poetry was still there. The sincerity was still there. So what if my priest was in a flannel shirt? God sees what's in the heart, not what is on the outside. God loves us for us, no matter how we come into a church. Isn't a church a place of refuge for the fouler, darker parts of our hearts, where we can let it go to God and know we are not judged but LOVED for our not-quite-beautiful clothing and possibly dirty hands?

It took 2 years and seeing this year's really impressively elaborate liturgy to realize what God was telling me and teaching me.

About Me

After being raised Roman Catholic in an intensely religious household, I found the Episcopal Church and knew I had found my spiritual home. I am in a lay preaching program now and have aspirations to one day enter the clergy.
I love to cook.
Every possible day I walk all over the woods with my husband and our Rhodesian Ridgeback Winston and our vizsla Watson, and that is a spiritual experience in and of itself.
I'm trying to become a runner, but I absolutely suck at maintaining it as a habit.
I also speak French rather well, but I don't get the chance to do so very often.